More than hockey for wives of Thrashers players

It’s true that there are no women in the NHL, but there are certainly women behind the NHL. It’s the hockey player’s wife who's charged with running the household and often moving the family across the country – or across the world -- sometimes all alone.

“I’m the CFO, the chauffeur, the chef,” said Ryan, wife of Thrashers forward Eric Boulton and mother of the couple’s four children. “You have to have your stuff together. He’s got to focus on his game.

“He physically can’t be here all the time. He can’t take care of the day-to-day things. It’s not like he can always call the cable company or anything.”

The traveling life of an NHL player means time away from home, no matter the circumstances. Though their first three kids were born during the offseason, the Boulton’s fourth child arrived at mid-season. Ryan was left to find a girlfriend to bring her and baby home from the hospital.

“We have a saying: ‘Suck it up, Nancy,’ ” Ryan said. “There is no whining or complaining. ... My girlfriends say it must be hard that he’s always away. It does stink that he has to miss things like gymnastics. But he has a job, we’re healthy and he does what he loves for a living.”

To allow her husband to do what loves for a living meant spending a season in Russia for Tracy, wife of Thrashers defenseman Mark Popovic. He spent last season playing for St. Petersburg in the KHL when there was no opportunity in the NHL.

“I was a little nervous,” Tracy said. “I was also excited. I never had been out of the U.S. before. I was afraid at first, especially in the grocery store. It was a little scary. ...

“It’s part of marriage. I knew it was the nature of the career when we got married.”

About all the moving.

When Colby Armstrong was traded to the Thrashers in 2008 his wife, Melissa, remained back in Pittsburgh when he joined his new team. However, in time she would have to leave friends, her job as a nurse and a home behind.

“She was sad to leave her friends there that she had gotten to know,” Armstrong said. “It’s tough. It’s different for them because they get stuck with all the leftover stuff that we have to deal with.”

Popovic officially was told he had made the Thrashers roster in the fall and had to find a permanent residence. The couple went from renting a place, to staying in a hotel during camp to moving into their current home. Including moving into an offseason home in Ontario, the couple has moved its primary residence four times. Tracy did three of them by herself.

Independence is a necessary trait, Ryan said. Take care of the big things and you will eventually get to the little things, like those boxes of Christmas decorations that are still waiting to be stored.

Ryan, who was a cheerleader at the University of Georgia, is happy to be home and put down roots. But she knows there could come a day when the moving van will return.

“God has blessed us,” Ryan said. “By the grace of God there is no place I’d rather be. But if we have to go, we’ll go and make the best of it. I told Eric, ‘You know hockey and you know your career. Do what’s best.’ We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. ... Who knows when it will be over. It can be fleeting.”

In the meantime, while their husbands tend to the business of hockey, their wives tend to the business of family.

“There are definitely neat parts about it,” Ryan said. “I love watching him play. I’m a mom first and a wife first. It’s not like it’s a life of [manicures and pedicures].”

One advantage of the mobile life of an NHL family is with every new city there is an instant support system. Who else knows better the trials and tribulations of relocating than other hockey players and their wives?

“I get really homesick no matter where we are,” Tracy said. “... You become really close friends really quickly. Sometimes, those are the people you spend holidays with.”